In Which Dan and Leigh Occasionally Go on Vacation

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Daily Archives: June 22, 2018

Having successfully acquired fish, it was now time to get something to put under the fish. Even though we had decided not to actually pay the fee to sit in the hot spring, we nonetheless drove back to the one we had previously considered to acquire another Icelandic traditional food item: fermented shark.

No, just kidding. We wanted to get some geothermal rye bread, baked right in the hot springs. Purchasing a loaf was straightforward, but locating knives proved trickier. We checked at a nearby restaurant, and while they didn’t have any plastic silverware, the proprietor noticed our loaf and was at pains to warn us not to eat more than a slice or two, lest we suffer acute gastric fluidity.

So now we had lots of fish, suddenly suspicious bread, butter, and no way to combine same. There was obviously no alternative – we went to a gas station, which meant driving even further back the way we had come. At said gas station we acquired a loaf of presumably safer paprika bread and a box of plastic knives.

From there it was time to visit one of the most important national parks in Iceland, Þingvellir. Since I’ve now gone four paragraphs without a picture, let’s make up for that right now:

And, how about another panorama? (It’s the law.)

And in case the scale of that big pile of geology isn’t quite coming across:

Þingvellir literally means “Assembly Field”, and it’s where the ancient parliaments of Iceland met. We found a picnic table surrounded by ducks and ate our bread and fish, and it was delicious. The ducks weren’t allowed to have any.

By this point, it was after 9 PM, but there was absolutely no way to determine that from the ambient lighting, which was pretty much the same as it had been all day long.

Did we mention that Iceland is spectacularly pretty? I think we mentioned that. At any rate, after a hike around this corner of the park, we were about out of gas, so we returned to our AirBnB in Reyjavik where, at 11:30, it was STILL just as bright as it had been all day.

After our tomato lunch, it was time for lots more geology. Iceland is basically covered in geology, and our next stop was Gullfoss waterfall. It sort of speaks for itself:

After Gullfoss, we headed to Geysir hot springs area. Geysir is both the name of the park, and the name of one specific geyser in the park. This is the ur-geyser, the Platonic Ideal of geysers, the one true geyser for which all other geysers are named.

Sadly, it almost never erupts any more. Fortunately, there’s another one about 50 meters away that erupts every five minutes. It erupted several times while we were there, and we somehow still failed to take a decent picture of it. The whole area was very reminiscent of Yellowstone – lots of random very hot things in unnatural colors that smell like sulfur.

We climbed up the hill at the back of the area and took another stunning panorama. Honestly, Iceland almost demands that you leave your camera in panorama mode the whole time:

Continuing around the circle, we decided it was time for ice cream. The ice cream place had a good view of the suppliers:

From there, our plan was to visit a geothermal bath, but when we got there it just didn’t speak to us. We decided it would be more fun to keep seeing the Iceland than sit still in a tub. But first – fish!

I had printed out directions to a place that sells smoked fish. The place had been highly recommended by one of the online blogs I had read while researching the trip ahead of time, and it was only a short distance from the spa. Or at least, that was my recollection, since the directions were sitting on my desk in Michigan. But we decided to try to find it, because adventure!

First we turned down a medium-sized road which was being resurfaced. So it was dirt. Then we turned down a small gravel road, which matched my vague mental recollection. Then we turned down what were essentially ruts between houses in a tiny little village. Then we pulled into a driveway in front of a private home with a detached garage, that had a sign on it in Icelandic that we couldn’t read and a picture of a fish.

We got out of the car, and wandered into what appeared to be a private garage with no one around. And there was fish:

We were trying to decide if we should just put money in the cashbox when two adorable preteen girls came out and started putting out samples and chatting with us in perfect English. A further difficulty arose when we realized that a) we had no Icelandic cash and b) neither of their credit card readers was working. Eventually their grandmother came out and was kind enough to accept $10 US for some smoked trout. She even tried to offer us change!

The top of every guide to what to see in Iceland starts with a day trip from Reykjavik called “The Golden Circle.” It’s a round trip that takes about 3 hours or so of driving, but much more time out of the car looking at stuff. There’s a lot of stuff. It’s pretty good stuff, too.

So after starting the day with some excellent pastries and coffee, we hopped in our rental car and set off. There’s two options for the first leg of the drive, and we took the gravel road for more scenic views and less traffic. It seemed to work. There was quite a bit of scenery:

Scenic scenery, even:

Also an angry squid:

But it was a scenic squid.

We got out of the car a few times and just marveled at the landscape, occasionally hiking up into the rocks to fail to find a geocache or two. But who cares when you have these views?

Eventually, we rejoined the main road and made our first official Golden Circle stop – the volcanic crater at Kerið. (In case you’re wondering, ‘ð’ is a “voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative.” So there you are.) It took about 20 minutes to walk around the whole perimeter. Not for the only time this trip, Leigh took the appearance of this striking piece of geology as proof that the Earth is trying to kill us.

We still had a little time before our lunch reservations, so we visited the church at Skálholt. Skálholt was the center of power for the Bishops of Iceland for rather a long time, until the Reformation. The bishop and his sons, were understandably, not really interested in being reformed, so they were put to death. There’s a memorial stone here, as well as a set of excavations of one of the many prior churches on the site.

One o’clock, and it was time for lunch! We had made reservations at a tomato greenhouse. I’m not quite sure how they managed it, but the owners of this greenhouse have parlayed themselves into a tourist attraction. You sit among rows of tomato plants, and eat all you can snarf tomato soup and bread. There’s also a pot of basil on your table with a pair of scissors for dismantling said basil into your soup.